Writings of a strange arts student

Tag Archives: mistake

So, this is a bit of a response to my sister’s post HERE on her jealousy inspiring adventure into glass blowing.

She was the one to mention glory holes, by the way, this wasn’t me being a brat and trying to prompt my older sister into asking if I know what a glory-hole is.

I do, by the way Lexy.

I hope that the fact that I’m 19 helps to negate the sibling-nose-scrunch of “my sister knows about something sexual in nature?”

Yes, I’ve moved past the playground “Are you a virgin?”-“What’s that?”-“Just answer the question” trolling, and even know where babies come from.

Storks, right?

But moving on from THAT, I suggest that you read her post (link above) first (though it isn’t entirely necessary) just so you know how things actually went rather than this bout of my imagining my own reaction to being allowed to play with molten glass and colours.

I think that there would be three parts to my reaction, and because the idea amuses me, I’m going to use my three mental characters that I always end up thinking of regardless of the situation.

Sanity, Insanity, and Myself, who I have been thinking of as Mediator. Click HERE for my post explaining where Sanity and Insanity came to mind. To the left there should be a thing to find all my posts including these characters…

Anyway, Lexy mentions that while actually working with the glass, there was a dull roar of “MAKING GLASS”, and when cooling and twisting and doing other things to the hot glass, thinking “don’t touch the glass!” with lots of undercurrent thoughts like don’t set anything on fire and whatnot…

I feel like I would be having a very similar reaction, but with a bit more paranoia towards the possibility of potentially harming myself or others.

The idea of molten-glass burns freaks me out.

It freaks me out more than the idea of molten-lava burns, because people don’t try to make lava into art.

The possibility of hurting someone else while I’m working, while I’m trying to make some piece of art, while I’m doing ANYTHING that could possibly result in someone else’s harm freaks me out.

Last summer when I was working with heavy machinery daily around my fellow maintenance workers, I was freaking out a lot.

So the idea of fiddling around with molten glass with other people around me also doing this… freaks me the hell out.

I would still do it though.

But it doesn’t keep me from thinking that the insane and fairly bitchy part of my consciousness would be going off like a little kid who wandered off in Ikea.

Fascinated, freaking out, touching things and possibly breaking things, being a nuisance to other people, being a tiny-human-shaped terror.

The sane part would be that employee you go to to find that same kid.

They know what to do, they try to keep you calm and happy so you can enjoy your foray into the large plot of land that is Ikea, and when they find the child, they will do damage control and do their best to get that demon-child back to someone who can control it. The Mediator.

I have a friend who worked at Ikea for a summer, by the way.

So in my mind, the situation would likely have me looking fairly normal, perhaps with a slightly hysteric (Happiness? Freaking out? Smiling regardless of reason.) smile, with Insanity screaming in my ear all the things that could go wrong, all the craptastic things that could result in me and others going on a fun trip to the hospital. Screaming about how I SHOULDN’T TURN TOO QUICKLY! SOMEONE MIGHT BE THERE! FUCK! Oh, and also, BE SURE TO WARN EVERYONE THAT YOUR CLUMSY ASS IS HEADING OVER THERE SO YOU DON’T CRIPPLE THEM! SHIT!

Never mind Sanity speaking calmly to me at my other side what EXACTLY I have to do, as I need to do it, and that everyone knows to watch out, calm down, nothing to worry about, just be careful, breathe…

It really doesn’t help with the fact that it seems like it’s almost a familial trait to want to play with fire. I can barely be trusted with a candle… And oh look, shiny-glowing-hot-glass-FUNNNNNNN!

Yeah, I imagine that going to a glass blowing workshop would be the most mentally tiring thing I’d have done for the entire year.

And I’m saying this AFTER having just finished my exams…

Jeez…

And I still want to go to one of these things!

By the way, for the >*< at the end of her post, mentioning her setting things on fire and her mentioning of heating up a muffin for 10 minutes…

*sigh* I will explain.

I have been the source of a lot of fiery food/other being thrown to the back yard. A lot of the time it was from me trying to heat up my own food, so this isn’t me being a pyromaniac child, no.

This is usually from me not understanding the answer to a question.

The incident Lexy is talking about:

That I had asked Dad how long it took to cook muffins after he’d finished a batch.

He said to put them in the oven for about ten minutes, and then check on them.

The oven HE was talking about

vs.

The oven I Thought he was talking about

So, a while later after a few minutes a burning smell was happening, there was the alarm going off, and a flaming muffin was being chucked out the back door into the snow.

Yay for winter.

To recap:

That I had asked Dad how long it took to cook muffins after he’d finished a batch.>> (Me: I want to eat a warm muffin later) <<

He said to put them in the oven for about ten minutes, and then check on them. >> (Dad: Aw, she wants to know how long to cook muffins) <<

It’s more of a mistake on my side, I think, but considering I was at that waist-height age, and not very good at getting across exactly what I wanted to know…

Yeah.

And it wasn’t the only thing I’d set on fire before, either, but I think that the full list would need a blog post of its own.

In case you need a visual, the flaming muffin probably looked something like this before it hit snow. You can imagine why it might have alarmed the Family to see this in the microwave...

This was nice, as it meant that I wouldn’t have to make the treacherous journey myself to Toronto.

There was a great deal of walking (not as much as one would think though), we went to the Museum of Civilization (GO THERE! Especially if you have kids. Not specifically kid-oriented, but a lot of things for them to touch, look at, all that stuff), ordered too much food on more than one occasion, and, among other things, they helped me start packing up.

Some may be reading this, checking the date, wondering why I am packing up now rather than later, closer to when the actual school term ends, and I’m going to have to say it’s because there’ll be less crap to pack up at the end of the year this way.

Three bins of stuff, a couple of boxes, a shelving unit that they brought down part way through the school year, and some other things, and my room is much sparser, but likely will be much easier to pack up in May.

See? I’m not just crazy here.

The packing was done on Sunday, with much cleaning and failed organization on my part (and cleaning on the family’s part, I admit), and at one point, nearing the end of the moving-stuff-to-car phase, Mom and I were in my room, and Lexy was in the kitchen…

I heard the Yeti, my only female roommate come in and say “Hi!” to Lexy.

In my mind, this was a normal thing. The Yeti is being friendly. Ok.

I walked out of my room and into the kitchen, and said Hi myself.

“WHOA!”

The Yeti had apparently thought that my sister was me. I at first thought that her startled yell was over the bins in the kitchen… but no. It was the startlement of saying Hi to someone, getting a response, and then having the person you thought you just said Hi to come into the room. And say Hi back again.

I still giggle over it… I think I take too much pleasure in people mistaking me for Lexy and Lexy for me, and us for twins…

we really aren’t.

There is more than a one year gap between Lexy’s and my own age. More than 3, in fact.

So it’s funny that I look that old, and Lexy looks that young, and we look that much like each other despite such a gap…

And we sound pretty much the same as well.

I mentioned that I probably take too much pleasure in us being mistaken for each other?

That extends to the phone.

So it is totally understandable that the Yeti thought my sister was me, and despite me having some colour in my hair, and Lexy’s hair being shorter than my own…

To show, here are two pictures of My sister and I side by side

Lexy: Left & Me: Right

This is over last summer, taken at Grundy Park (where I worked).

Me: Left & Lexy: Right

This is a slightly more recent picture, before I got colour in my hair.

Two bouts of stupidity for you, as I try to get a slightly more serious post out-of-the-way.

Topic: Yahoo Questions and Answers.

2 things.

Thing #1:

I noticed, every time I looked at an answer on this, I saw that there was a ‘Best Answer – Chosen by Asker’ on every answered question.

Who the hell is Asker?

I think it’s the capitals of Asker that made me think this was a person. I now know that it’s asker like the person who ASKED, rather than a name similar to an old classmate… I think his name was Askar? I can’t remember, but it was close enough to ‘asker’ that when I actually read and absorbed exactly what was being written there, I noticed that it was on EVERY answered question–or at least every question that had gone past it’s question due-date (when the asker sets for the question to be answered by in general)–and it didn’t make any sense as to why people were putting such weight into the top choice of this Asker figure…

I don’t know what made me clue in, but it was probably just one day I read it and actually understood it as it could also be.

So the mystery of who the hell Asker was and why they were so important was solved, and boy am I glad that I never ASKED someone about this oddity.

It’s fine admitting this now, as I now know my mistake, but I feel like the embarrassment of having to be informed of this…

And now the internet knows 😛

And as a bonus, HERE’s what I was recently Yahoo’ing to make me think of this. The milk expiration date is Feb 28, and it’s March 2nd, and while I know that the expiration date is only a BEST BEFORE date, Lexy has me paranoid of these things now.

Even after reading the Best Answer, I still did her test of pouring it into a cup first before risking cereal.

Lexy, this is not an attack, I just am weary of the possibility of off milk after finding a small carton of solid chocolate milk that my roommates had left in the fridge. (ink, read posts from bottom up to understand)

Okay, and Thing #2

This was a while ago, and in the timeframe of “I don’t care about the ‘real’ shows, I like cartoons ONLY–for the most part” sort of stage that I have moved from to embrace the “I like everything–for the most part” sort of stage I am in now.

I still watch a huge amount of anime online (can name a number of sites off the top of my head even), but I also look up episodes to ‘real’ shows…

So, when I went on an “I’m helpful and will answer questions on Yahoo Answers” spree when I was in I think grade 8 or maybe 9, I came across a question asking for where to find episodes of Dexter.

Dexter's Lab anyone?

I thought, hey, I wouldn’t want to watch that right now, but I know where they can look!

Found out later that Dexter is something different.

Very Different

To add to this, I found out late in Rangers, a program I took during the summer I was 17, that my answer made it onto 4chan. My dear friend S told me while laughing that she’d seen it posted there, and thought it was funny that she now knew it was from me…

Greeeeat…

And, I don’t know if this misunderstanding on my part bore this into the world, or perhaps someone else who was like “LOLZ Old Cartoon or New Show? MIXED” but the picture below makes me smile anyway.

And also worry that I started something that will bite me now that I’m fessing up to two Yahoo blunders.

So there are two things of embarrassment, now out to the internet, if anyone else has seen my ‘answer to the Dexter Query, please send me a link or something…

Hi guys, my sisters and I did a totally doggy darkish thing this last weekend!

YEAH! We went to the equivalent of a dog convention!

Yes I went to Woofstock... TORONTO!

Pretty much all of the booths were for dogs. There were lots of dogs underfoot, and I was taking pictured of it like a fiend!

We got Gwynn a bunch of things, many of which were on a slight discount (does no tax added count? Yes, when it adds 3 dollars), and we gushed and acted like mild Bieber fans at his concert at some of the dogs (HOMIGOD I SAW LIKE 6 GREAT DANES!) [P.S. Microsoft tells me by way of squiggly red line that Bieber is WRONG. Thank you Microsoft for confirming that for me :D]. There were a lot of contests that we could win as well, and that was exciting too…

Omigod, 4kg of chicken patties/week??? For a YEAR? *faints*

One of the things that we saw lots of were “Save ___!!” booths, the ones that tell people about a certain breed, and that they have shelters that are specifically for the protection and adoption of that breed. There were a few booths that were for shelters that take in animals in general, and I say All the Power to You for it.

One of the things that I notice about Specialized Shelters vs General Shelters is that it attracts different kinds of people. Some reading this are shaking their heads, either in ‘no duh’ or in ‘as if’ mentality, and some others don’t bother with outwardly showing their thoughts on what they’re reading, and still more are reading this going ‘really? Now move on already…’

Moving on.

The difference is that people who already have an idea of what kind of dog that they’d like, and possibly already have that kind of dog will gravitate towards the specialized booths. This includes the people who (like me) are allergic to fur, and have already done research for what kind of dog has hair, or are known to be hypoallergenic.

Also for big dogs, but they get put down quicker than small dogs while in shelters.

People who gravitate towards the general shelter booths are those who (also like me) like the idea of getting a mutt (I say this with affection, I have nothing against Mutts except for their tendency to make me allergic), and helping give a dog who perhaps has had a bad time of it up until then a good home, and are willing to be surprised at which kind of temper their new puppy/dog/demon will have.

There is no real contrast with either, except for the difference in mentality.

One mentality is that they’ve researched the breed and/or have a soft spot for the breed and/or need a breed that fits into your allergy restrictions.

The other is that you want to help out a dog and/or are looking for a nice surprise that may or may not be exempt from some breeding issues (inbreeding stupidness, hip dysplasia, etc…) and/or would like a dog in general, and would like to have some variety.

I would get myself a cat.... if I wasn't allergic. Did you know they have mutant hypoallergenic cats now?

There are also people who like cats, and they generally go to the general shelters… (don’t quite understand why they don’t go the specialty dog shelters… hmm…)

I have no issue with either of them, and understand a lot of the mentality that starts both, and would like to help out any way that I can.

Westies are very intelligent and definitely not “laid back”. They are happy, playful and affectionate but they are also tough, hardy, independent and tenacious.They are also possessed of no small amount of self-esteem.

They can be assertive and demanding.This makes them a wonderful companion for those who appreciate and are charmed by the terrier temperament but a disaster for the person who wants a gentle-natured little dog bred primarily for cuddling.

If you are not prepared to provide structure, leadership and training for your Westies, this is not the breed for you.

My sister has a lot of experience with Westies, and this is her favourite Breed. Emma/Peanut, has had to walk two very different Westies, one who is a very energetic (and wired) dog, and one who is more laid back.

General Shelter, RESCUE DOGS!

This dog (to the right) was awesome, and I love the breed (whatever it is

This dog was in a kennel next to the Westoies in Need booth...

(possibly some kind of greyhound or whippet)). It’s probably fur, but I love its face! >>

Coat type/colour, personality, breed (s), you can even get lucky some times and get a hypoallergenic dog, regardless of the breed (It’s true).

Dogs from Shelters are great companions, and are always uniquely special.

With a nickname like “American Gentleman,” you can expect your Boston Terrier to be good-natured, intelligent, and polite with a

Save the Tiny Alien dogs! They're too cute!

sense of humor. But like many American gentlemen, they embody a little bit of spunk and spirit that makes them unique.This poster promotes my idea that, like superman, Boston Terriers are aliens come down to earth

Breeders and fanciers describe Boston Terriers as gentle, alert, and well-mannered. The dogs can be rambunctious, harkening back to their terrier ancestors. But that same energy can be redirected into rousing games of fetch, flyball, or agility.

This poster promotes my idea that, like superman, Boston Terriers are aliens come down to earth

Not known to be barkers, Boston Terriers don’t make the best guard dogs — especially because they’re too friendly to strangers! They adore children and senior citizens, making a properly socialized Boston an ideal pet for a young family or an empty-nester. Me- I like them because if there were doggie aliens, this would probably be what they would look like, possibly in rainbow colours 😀 See above picture to see that the shelter people agree!

Golden Retrievers are probably one of the top five breeds that combine an eagerness to please, playfulness, gentleness and devotion. There is a downside to this however – because they crave so much attention and wanting to be around their owners – these traits can be annoying to some.

As opposed to the bronze or silver rescue 😀

Rankings for:

— Stress when left alone: Average; left alone too much develops into behavioral issues

— Used for personal protection: Medium to high; more of an alert dog than protection

— Used as a guard dog: Poor and extremely low in this role

— Barking: Usually alerting more than anything else
— Level of aggressiveness: Very low (hey, this is where Air Bud came from :D)
— Child friendly: Very high – too active & rowdy for infants or toddlers though; excessive licking and/or ‘mouthing’ can be an issue if not addressed
— Socializing with other animals: Usually very well, love to play and will often roll over first unless you have a poorly bred Golden

Don't worry, despite what this picture kind of looks like, Beagles aren't from the underworld

Beagles are energetic, active, alert and even tempered. They are very social dogs and like the company of people and other dogs. They do not like to be left alone for long periods and if so, will get into mischief. Their soulful and pleading eyes will convince you to give them treats and table food which, if you give in to them, will eventually lead to obesity, something that should be monitored carefully because spinal problems are common in overweight beagles.

PLEASE NOTE that the one beagle I know (who Lexy may have mentioned, or may mention in the future) got bit by another aggressive dog as a puppy, and as a result is not a dog friendly dog. If you do hear more stories from Lexy or I in the future about him, do not hold up his personality against Beagles in general. He is a very people-friendly dog, but has issues with most other dogs. This is not normal beagle behaviour, and any dog bitten at a young age has the possibility of becoming dog weary/aggressive.ALL dogs have this possibility, at any stage in life. I have regularly had to pull Gwynn away from tiny dogs because their owners say that poor Mupsy’s uncomfortable with larger dogs because one pushed him down once. Please please PLEASE ask, when you are going for a walk with your dog and see another dog walker, if their dog is friendly or not BEFOREyour own dog is within interacting distance.

Many people do not consider Bulldogs for pets mostly because of its stocky stature and seemingly mean appearance. However, this breed is actually known to make good family pets.

It is actually quite gentle and not too hyperactive. In fact, it is known to be quite the lazy dog which is the reason why it is perfect for small homes or apartments. Even families with small children will do well with Bulldogs. Some are very playful when they are puppies and tend to be a little bit restless. However, it often becomes calm and composed as it grows to become a full adult.

You can get Cats here 😀

Organization for the Rescue of Animals!

Yet another General Adoption and Rescue Dog shelter.

This seems like it would be a lot more of these around, but there were only three, and I could only get pictures (to help my memory) for two.

If you are not planning on adopting a dog, then try donating to any of these places, or any shelter near you.

There are all kind of specialized dog shelters, and even a few specialized cat shelters.

One place which I thought was a good investment was one that specialized in dark animals. In general, when you go looking for dogs, most families and a good percentage of non-families will avoid darker looking animals, cats perhaps because of that stupid superstition, and dogs perhaps because it makes them look dangerous.

On the side, The superstition about black cats and crossing paths was made up by Catholics in an attempt to attract others from their religions. By taking black cats and making them unlucky, they are directly opposing Egyptian mythology, as one of their favourite goddesses has the head of a black cat, and black cats are the guardians to the underworld.

The only explanation for the black/dark coloured dogs (that I can think of) would be that in most movies with guard dogs, the dogs are really dark, and also, when you think of something scary, you think of something dark.